


Nightcrawler

by reichenbach



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: AKA: my obsession with suburban/southern gothic, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Bartender Charles, Drug Use, Electra Heart Complex, M/M, Multimedia Fic, Neon Lights and Ghost Towns, Photographer Erik, Purple Hearts, Southern Gothic, Suburban, but charles is this human wreck of a poor boy, i don't know how to tag this send help, they have this tiny bit of power and that's why erik looks for charles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 20:16:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4151436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reichenbach/pseuds/reichenbach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I dreamt we'd grow old together, you and I" Charles Xavier says, laying on the steps of his front porch, each wooden board marking his vertebrae one by one "a thousand miles away from here, from this sad, sad town, right into the lights of the city."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightcrawler

**Author's Note:**

> really quick summary: charles is stoned most of the time and hates his professor façade so he bleached his hair and started to bartend - erik went looking for him because he wants to know what the fuck is going on with metal stuff and ends up into this purple town that's crawling with neon lights and he wants to photograph the shit out of that  
> (p.s: english is not my first language so if there are any errors at all please do write me about that!!!)

_we are high, I'm in love_  
_we are high,[fucked up American boys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQEW8Sg3AIs)_  
_drinking right, we'll never give up_  
_cause where we're from, God is on our side_  


“So, this Charles Xavier – he’s a boring one, I assure you.”  
It’s 2:45 am. The bartender’s words melt slowly into Erik’s ears, as sticky and sweet as honey – he’s a peculiar fellow, even though he looks a bit gloomy with his bottle blond hair and longing eyes. Those are iridescent, switching from deep blue to the lightest shade of green, and sparkle lazily in a way Erik once used to see in his own mirror.

“Is he? I thought he was the youngest professor around here.”  
This bartender is a lonely soul and smiles at him gingerly, God knows how many substances he’s on right now; he manages to keep on splendid though, and his lips are of the brightest red he’d ever seen. Or maybe it’s the lights, it’s the headache, it’s almost 3 am and after he’s been a while looking for one Charles Xavier he’s almost given up. 

Erik contours the line of the bartender’s neck with his gaze, skin pale with a few hickeys there and there – and a tattooed ‘X’ right under his Adam’s apple. He could take home this God-forgotten boy and easily undress him, that loose white shirt screaming just for that – _take me home, make me yours, I’m a little pretty doll for you to use_. His blue gaze was fixed in his as if there were nails being hammered into his own pupils – it felt like this wicked soul was inside his mind, pouring one drink after another, mercilessly asking Erik to fuck him.  
X looks like he’s been going on nights without sleeping, staring outside his window with his cheekbones submerged into the blue neon light of the night, or into a corner spending all of his tip money on drugs and stale cigarettes.

This twenty-something boy feels like a thousand nights of 70s TV shows and cheap motels. Erik wold like to photograph the squalor of his sadness, the gingerly way he’s toying with his heart as if it were a remote controlled car.

Thing is – he ended up into his bar looking for said Professor Charles Xavier, a young golden boy who’d gotten his PhD in Genetics God knows how many years ago - because his own genes, the one who built up that beaten body year after year seemed to contain some sort of mystery he couldn’t explain. He was never a scientist, a mathematician - he was merely a storyteller. But the evolution of the human species in something superior, something with power yet to unleash – he felt that in his blood, and there were bits of his life he couldn’t explain to anyone but to that Charles Xavier, which of course is impossible to find.

Now, Erik feels the same way he felt reading Professor Xavier’s thesis: the blood pumping into this bartender’s vein sounds like his own, screaming _danger! danger! danger!_ at every heartbeat. He’s shouting _I’m different! I’m different!_ with his whole body language. He almost lets him slip out those words: “I can move metal just a little. I can do things I’m not supposed to.” but Erik stops, the X on that neck withholding him from any further words.

And the way this boy’s toying with his mind – that can’t be just his drinking, can it? Let alone the craving desire rising minute after minute because of that, the longing and the burning and a way Erik hadn’t felt in a long time.  
Erik doesn’t seem to stop drinking though, each shot driven to his mouth by sadness, or lust, or anger. What was going on with this stoned boy? What was he thinking? He’s too old for this, and this pretty face right here – he’s younger than he’ll ever be.

Erik Lehnsherr is the only customer right now. The background noises are soothing him, wooden chairs and glasses going back where they belong, their little space collisions made X’s smile look much more closer than Erik thought it was, right until a woman stepped up behind the counter.

It felt like she made him snap out of that trance he was in (until now, it had felt like he had smoked weed of its own, and was starting to acknowledge the fact that X was inside of his head) by interrupting the intimate, long-lasting eye contact he had been making with the bartender until now.  
“What a mess you’ve made with your hair, you know you are going to make a fuss of it in the morning.” the blonde woman placed a hand on his shoulder, whispering calmly into his ear, as if she was convincing him of something the same way we do with old people, damaged people, little sad crying children. 

“I am not going to make a fuss about it in the morning, Raven, Charles Xavier will.” X stiffly spits out his answer, looking enough lucid to manage a steady tone in his voice.

“So you _do_ know Charles Xavier?” Erik arches an eyebrow and X’s face becomes wearier.

“I do. When I think I know him, he sleeps in late and won’t be around for days to be seen. He’s the first thing I see when the sun has risen and he is so, so empty. He hears voices in his head, you know? He’s been taking so many pills for so long, he’s basically become Jekyll and Hyde. He ignores the monster that comes out at night, but he’s such a nice boy, so good and caring and he actually has a personality instead of being a-”  
X is stopped by this Raven, with whom he shares a thoughtful gaze. Such a gaze one would think they were communicating via their minds, a thought he couldn’t shake off, apparently.

“Do you like my hair, Mr. Lehnsherr? I bleached it this morning.”  
Erik finds himself saying yes even though his brain never released the input to do so.

“You know what he’d say to you? He’d say: your eyes, that colour – it’s a very groovy mutation. Then he’d smile the most charming smile of his and he’d say: I’ve got great news for you, Mr. Lehnsherr, you’re a mutant. That’s what he does: he puts off people with his brain, that vast knowledge of his. He’s truly boring, unlike me. I please people as they want, I’m a changeling; I am what they want me to be. Charles Xavier is one little sad soul and I’m far more interesting. You could photograph me, if you’d like.”  
X bites his lower lip, in full concentration.

“It’s way past closing time. I’d suggest you get on your way home, Mr. Lehnsherr.” the girl says to him, her eyes fixed and by any means not going to change the sound of her words.  
The look on that poor boy grew wearier and wearier as Erik paid for his drinks leaving an additional 20 bucks for those two, and he stands up ready to go - no question asked. _If he takes something else tonight_ , Erik thought, _this God-forgotten boy will OD’d._

Erik Lehnsherr looks into his reflection before he heads out. He’s tired and longing for a bed but behind him, the ghost of that pale bartender longs as well upon his shoulder. “Don’t go,” he whispers into his mind, “I feel it, Mr. Lehnsherr.”  
After that, Erik leaves, and the bartender reaches for the tin box full of pills and throws it in the bin.

☾

Whatever happened to the suburbs? They were once isolated oasis for families belonging to a certain lifestyle – this little town, made all of houses and streetlights, neon lights and sand, it didn’t feel right. Passing right in front of a gas stop with most of the lights out, a tight group of girls stare at him as if he were an alien and he could literally _feel_ the hatred and the intimacy bursting out of those teenage girls.

It felt eerie, otherworldly, the blond boy almost floating away on the front porch of the bar watching him head to that shallow motel of his.

As he walks further and further away from any civilization at all, Erik doesn’t stop thinking about that bar, that boy with the crossed X on his throat, the intimacy he shared with that woman as if they were the only survivors of a long lost group of necromancers. He definitely looked a little bit like the professor he was looking for – he takes out of his coat a cut-out of an article about him. The man in the picture shares the same neckline as him, and the same nose and the lovely shaped eyes; but then again, the boy in the bar was blond, his eyes a lot heavier than the professor’s, his lips had little cuts there and there.

Erik Lehnsherr was tired and felt almost stripped naked, as he still felt that stranger’s eyes floating into his mind and he found himself looking at a series of numbers written on his hand. When did that happen?

☾

As the man leaves, X lingers on the door, lightning a cigarette he miraculously found into his pocket. He makes it roll between his fingers until he finally lowers it to match his lips.

Another dawn in the suburbs is coming. He can slowly feel Charles Xavier making his way, condemning his lifestyle – as if he had something worth of his own to be proud of.

He sincerely thought he OD’d tonight, to spice up this miserable summer, but then this Erik Lehnsherr made his way into the bar just before closing time and he extended that a little more, another 10 minutes Raven, let him stay, let us talk, let him fall in love with me so that I can spend one last night on Earth as a lover.

He used his tricks – he let the voices in, and they were quieter, as if Mr. Lehnsherr made them lower their constant screaming just a bit- but Erik didn’t break. He wasn’t from here, obviously – the German accent appearing on the ends of some of his words gave him away – but he was very welcome into the dust-filled town this was, forgotten by God and all of his saints, nothing interesting but the bright neon lights at night that pointed at X’s crushed bones.

A little cloud of smoke resembling a spaceship leaves his lips while a sour taste lingers into his mouth: that man felt like him, as if they had shared a hundred years together before tonight. In hindsight, he was lucid enough to write his phone number on that stranger’s hand – if it turned out to be as he thought, Charles Xavier would have a nice surprise in the morning. He watches him as he disappears into the purple sand far, far away from his reach, crickets singing their song and the city doing her thing being the loneliest shipwreck into the ocean. Well, something must have had inspired him after all.

“Oh, Raven,” the boy almost dances back into the bar “do you think he likes me?”

“Let Charles decide that in the morning.” she embraces his shoulders with her hands, leading him out from the back. X watches his fake blond hair in the mirror completely different from the natural honey of his sister and bursts into a dry chuckle: “What am I doing, really?” His eyes are lucid, his body craving for sleep.

☾

  
Charles Xavier wakes up, 10 am sun tickling his eyelids open. He rolls into bed, that is at the same height of the floor, and reaches for his flip phone on the wooden ground that’s been lightning up the front led for a while.

“You were into my mind tonight.” Unknown number. It was sent at 5.54 am.  
Charles blinks slowly and touches his head, the shadow of a headache still there – how could someone else than he and Raven _possibly know?_

“Who’s this?” He types back, the rough sensation of that old keyboard soothing him as usual. The reply arrives instantly.

“X, it’s Mr. Lehnsherr – Erik. Again, any chance you could tell me about Professor Charles Xavier?”  
Charles Xavier gets up as fast as he can and, with his head spinning round and round manages to dial the number that’s been messaging him.

He waits for a few seconds and that waiting feels eternal, stomping his left foot regularly until someone picks up.

“I _am_ Charles Xavier. How did you get this number?”  
Horrified, he looks into the full body mirror at his right and discovers that his hair was bleached overnight.


End file.
